Cultivated meat companies have struggled over the past year as they try to figure out how to do something that’s never been done before: grow meat in large quantities in big metal vats.
Part of the challenge is figuring out how to grow the meat cells. The technology to do this has been borrowed from the pharmaceutical industry, where a single dose of a cancer drug can be sold for thousands of dollars. Needless to say, those cost dynamics don’t work when you’re making a chicken sandwich.
Deniz Kent thinks he has the answer. His company, Prolific Machines, is replacing expensive growth media with the cheapest energy input: light.
Listen to this conversation to hear how Deniz learned about how light could be a way to grow cells, why he thinks lights could help save the cultivated meat industry, and where he sees the cultivated meat industry going over the next decade.
You can listen to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or by clicking play below.
Interesting! While this breakthrough in food technology presents an alternative to raising and killing animals for food, let’s recognize the urgency of ditching meat for the planet’s sake. Ditching meat, eggs, and dairy today is a powerful step we can take to mitigate the harmful effects of animal agriculture on the planet. Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water. And by some estimates, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gases than all of the world’s transportation systems combined. When we go vegan, we significantly reduce our carbon footprints, conserve resources, and prevent the unnecessary suffering of animals raised for food. On factory farms, animals are kept in small stalls or cages, often unable to take a step or turn around. As they wait to become body parts for humans to eat, they are deprived of all that is natural to them—things we may take for granted, like exercise and sunlight. These animals need help now and can’t wait for cultured meat to be available.
Plant-powered upgrades, like Beyond Chicken Tenders, have already demonstrated that we can have all the flavors of meat without killing an animal. So let’s go vegan now.